JEMS.com Editor's Note: For more on pandemic flu planning, check out the May 2007 JEMS article "Pandemic Planning Strategies."

Containing an influenza pandemic in a large U.S. city like Chicago would require widespread school closings, quarantines of infected households and bans on public gatherings, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

But, if done quickly and well, such steps could reduce infections by as much as 80 percent, said researcher Stephen Eubank of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, based on a computer simulation of just such an event.